Angry and bitter people out there following Sunday’s District Council elections.
China’s domestic state media are all but ignoring the results, in line with Xinhua’s report that an election took place and nothing else happened. Beijing’s overseas propaganda organs apparently had pre-written stories on patriotic candidates’ great victory, suggesting that senior CCP officials genuinely expected that outcome – raising serious questions about how they gather intel, and the full extent of their cluelessness. (Reuters reports that Beijing might defenestrate Liaison Office boss Wang Zhimin for hobnobbing with Hong Kong’s rich rather than doing anything useful.) China Daily and others hurriedly patched together stuff about violence affecting the polls, evil foreign interference and so on.
(Update: Xinhua publishes a commentary complaining that the election fell victim to ‘black terror’, but hoping that correct understanding of Belt and Road will offer Hong Kong’s kids a brighter future.)
After months of ranting about protesters as unrepresentative extremist psycho-kids, the SCMP’s Alex Lo condemns the Hong Kong electorate to hell for hating the government more than they love the city (no, I don’t get it either).
Pro-Beijing lawmaker Paul Tse (affectionately described as ‘maverick’, otherwise as ‘pitiful wacko’) admits that the election is a warning to the government and urges faster prosecutions of arrested protesters to make everything OK again.
Most other CCP apologists are wisely keeping their heads down. Out in Twitter-land, my favourite tankies are trying to put a brave face on things, conceding that the Hong Kong public does not like the government, but insisting that pro-US, anti-Beijing radical subsets must be dealt with and doubting that it will happen – so let Hong Kong rot, etc.
The Hong Kong government has – predictably – clammed up. Some of its supporters are comforting themselves with the fact that the pro-establishment vote held up quite well.
A few points to remember on this. First, elections took place in many wards where the pro-Beijing candidate has previously been returned unopposed (thus the turnout had been zero, so obviously every party’s vote increased). Second, the United Front efforts to get the vote out (offer gifts, etc) was huge. Third, gerrymandering.
The new-age touchy-feely dialogue brigade also seem somewhat discomfited. Christine Loh (promoter of a recent HK Forward Forum on reconciliation) insists that it is still up to Hong Kong people to get into ‘informed deliberation’ on ‘One Country’ in order to avoid provoking Beijing. Learn to like kowtowing to the CCP, and everything will be bliss.
Perhaps the most cringe-making sourness (pre-dating Sunday) comes from someone at the warm and fuzzy Global Institute for Tomorrow (also in the recent HK Forward Forum) who was so incensed by a trivial-but-harmless Financial Times interview with the boy Joshua, that he wrote a seething, almost chip-on-shoulder, letter to the editor in response…
The CIA hacked the vote! Mossad hacked the CIA! And the FSB hacked Mossad with CIA help while Mossad was busy choosing a belt buckle with the Ministry of State Security.
We all know the silent majority are the real winners. Hong Kong’s dark horse. The silent majority…all the best people. Currently being sought by the MSS. Shhhhh.
I blame Grand Moff Tarkin
‘Govt to reflect on poll result, but no concessions’
It seems yer man Stryson is, according to his LinkedIn profile, a big fan of Yonder Lynchmob. Enough said.
I suspect that no one’s worked up the courage to tell Xi-who-must-be-obeyed that he wasn’t.
@ PaperCuts, can’t have been Grand Moff Tarkin, he was in Pizza Express in Woking at the time.
It’s wonderful to see the pro-beijing camp repeating ad nauseum “It should be the economy, stupid”, “It should be the economy, stupid”, “It should be the economy, stupid”.
That doesn’t make it true. And they forget that “Change vs. more of the same” is much more powerful nowadays.
Guys, be easy on Reactor #4 for the next couple weeks…
Really, it’s not easy being so wrong, and so consistently, too. It takes a toll.
And after the election results, to think that Hong Kong is filled with so many “shouty-louties”… He must be traumatised, indeed.
C’mon Beijing, Reactor #4 needs your help. The faster you double-down on semi-veiled threats of violent retribution toward the Hong Kong people, the faster our resident idiot can return to his mindless blathering!
OCTS, THE hallmark policy INNOVATION.
Lmfao
Reactor #4 truly is owned and it is delicious.
Carrie Lam gives a delusional response to the pro-government side’s thrashing in the elections:
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3039373/hong-kong-leader-carrie-lam-beijing-not-holding-me
Christine Loh says there is is no shame in “patriotism towards a flawed nation”.
What I have never understood is why having a particular ethnic identity or nationality requires “patriotism”, which often seems to be a blind conformity to the edicts of the rulers of the entity. Until I came to Asia the only people who used to bang on about being patriotic were American. When asked what they meant, or why they were patriotic, they often could not sensibly reply. Patriotism is often used as a synonym for nationalsim, which has rarely done any good anywhere.
To be a little hackneyed:
“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel” ( Samuel Johnson)
“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious” (Oscar Wilde) which seems particularly apt for the CCP
On a more personal note, Ms Loh seems well past her sell by date as a liberal or thinker or “intellectual”, even by the standards of Hong Kog.
Ms. Christine Loh is desperately trying to invent herself as the Queen of Negotiation, Reconciliation, The Reasonable Middle or whatever vacuous title she wants to staple to her paperboard crown.
Flashback to Occupy Central five years ago when the students were camping in the streets while Ms. Loh was sitting high up in a luxury aircon office in the Government Offices, knitting socks for 689 and counting her excessive salary. During her 6-year tenure she achieved exactly nothing. When a BBC TV crew was about to expose her incompetence, she asked them to switch off the camera.
And here is the Question: Why didn’t Ms. Loh apply her negotiation skills 5 years ago during the almost three months of Occupy? We did not hear a single word from her during that momentous period. Nothing. It was as if she didn’t exist.
My advice to Christine is to ‘hop on her bike’, fuck off to Shenzhen (Land of the Future) and never come back. Unfortunately, they have no need for her there, just like here in Hong Kong.
Lodownandout Alex does deserve a little credence. He calls for the dismissal of Security Lee and Justice Teresa while saying Carrie must get out very soon. Despite his smearing of true HK-ers as he sits in Vancouver he does offer reasonable suggestions as to prosecutions, or at least less not persections as does Grenville. (I’ve half-forgotten these blighters’ full names, which is a good sign, I hope).
Who knows? The whiskered, kinky one might follow the same path to enlightenment as Mickey Chugani (whose name I now remember more).
having known Christine Loh for a number of years, and having been a reader of her columns since before Wan Chai was nothing more than a place to pick up bar girls and play a bit of football, I cannot explain much how her apparent parroting of the CCP dogma came about, but can simply say, well, at least she does it in a nicer way.
And in the land of fixed elections par excellance, even the local Heung Yee Crooks couldn’t get it right. Saw a gaggle of about 12 elderlies being shepherded in by some dodgy looking heavy (and why the shades, it was nearly 7 pm?), with ‘friends’ sat outside, and they still lost. Remember all those ding uk houses you sold guys? Well the people who live in them don’t follow the old nudge-nudge wink -wink voting rules.
Alex Lo has been off the reservation for weeks, and I’ve even seen Tim Hamlett refer to him elliptically. Now he’s just caught up in such a twisted net in his mind I think he may be put out to pasture soon. Maybe he’ll hear a loud popping sound soon… the sound of his head popping out of his butt!
Did Alex Lo just support the five demands, not one less?
If there is a shake up at the liaison office, could CY Leung’s star be on the wane? Jasper Tsang yok sing dropped a strong hint in the HKFP interview that CY is/was a prime mover behind the hit-em-hard strategy which lead to the DC election rout.
@Gumshoes, contrast Lo’s cynicism in his latest column (give the DC’s more power, because the Dems will mess it up, which implies that he would prefer to see a decline in HK people’s quality of life) with the positivity of Paul Zimmerman in Monday’s Backchat (the newly-elected are more likely to roll sleeves up and work hard). I suppose the difference is that one is commenting from afar, while the other has stood for public office, and is actively involved in improving people’s lives.
@Northern Menance: No, he said they were the ramblings of terrorists, quite literally. He said that young people should love china and not call for independence. Of course, he fails to understand that the five demands had nothing to do with independence, but were in fact a call for the government to recognize the Basic Law.